Explorers
by QuintusC
Summary: When the monsters were banished to the Underground, they marched straight for the deepest caverns without mapping or making note of the regions they were passing. With the population of Home rising, talk has begun of sending explorers to map the unknown lands. The King's two sons, Chara and Asriel Dreemurr, take it upon themselves to do it first.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

I sucked back tears as my mother prodded my bruised ribs with both hands. Determining that nothing was broken, she turned her attention to the burns on my arms and applied some magic that stung even as it healed me. Chara stood in the corner of the room.

"Honestly I should ground both of you," Mom said. "I don't even care whose idea it was. You're both knuckleheads as far as I'm concerned."

All around Home, away from the brick buildings we were used to, there were tunnels and caverns still in their natural shape, and exploring them was one of my and Chara's favorite ways to spend a summer day. What got Chara going this time was a tree. There were plenty of trees in Home, but somehow he had gotten the idea that this one grew a sweet star-shaped fruit found nowhere else in the Underground, and he really wanted to try some. He made himself a map, he knew exactly the way to go, and he said if we were quiet, we could get in and out before anyone knew what was up.

We picked our moment to sneak off, and Chara led the way. We crawled through the tunnels for about an hour before we found it, and as we approached the tree, Chara cautioned us to walk lightly and keep our voices down. He climbed the tree while I waited below to catch the fruit and put it in the bucket we had brought. He'd thrown down just over half a dozen before we were spotted. I heard them coming and called for Chara to come down, but he just stayed there clinging to his branch, and I held my ground for as long as I could before self-preservation took over and I booked it. I stumbled into a moldsmal that, in a defensive reflex, shot me with its acidic goo, and as I recoiled from the pain I was body slammed by a froggit, and my head hit the stone. The froggit sat on top of me and rained down blows until Chara came and pushed it off. He beat the froggit over and over with his fists. After a while it stopped even trying to fight and just lay there.

I begged him to leave, and pretty soon we did, leaving the froggit where it was. We ran all the way back the way we came, straight into our own front door. We didn't have time to think of a convincing lie, so we caved and told Mom the truth. Burned, bruised, covered in dirt and our clothes ruined, there wasn't much we could have said to explain it.

"You're not going to do something like that again, right?" Mom was just finishing with her treatment.

I shook my head.

"Good," she said.

"Why do some monsters attack us?" I said. "Isn't Dad the King?"

"Just because your father's the King doesn't mean you can go anywhere and do anything you like. I don't imagine you would like it if someone snuck into _our_ home to steal a slice of pie, or one of your chocolate bars."

"But it wasn't like someone's _house_ or anything, it was just a cave."

"Some monsters prefer to live in caves. To them, it's just as much a home as our house is to us."

"But they can't really be said to _own_ it, can they? Dad's the King—if anything, _we_ own it. And besides, they didn't warn us or yell at us to leave or anything, they just attacked. Aren't you not supposed to do that?"

"If you want to get political, we haven't formally claimed that territory, so it doesn't belong to us either. But that's not the point. Monsters have a certain nature, and to keep things peaceful, your father thinks it best at times to accommodate monsters as they are, rather than try to force everyone to live a certain way. As long as they're not going out and hurting anyone, it's all right to let monsters live in caves if that's what they want. Now go and get ready for your bath, both of you."

She left to go fill up the tub while Chara and I went to our room. We started undressing and threw our messy clothes in the bin. Chara unwrapped his shirt to show me two pieces of the star fruit he had been hiding, and tossed one to me.

"Thanks for not throwing me under," he said.

We bit into the fruit. It wasn't like anything I was used to, but it really was sweet, and Chara was plainly delighted.

"I'm sorry you got beat up," he said. "Even so, it was fun, right? Imagine if we'd gotten a whole bucket of these."

"You beat that froggit up pretty bad," I said.

"He was beating you up. I had to stop him, didn't I?"

"Did you have to beat him up _that_ badly? He even stopped moving."

"He'll be fine. Maybe he'll know not to mess with us next time."

"I'm not sure if I like it."

"I don't like it either. But sometimes monsters want to hurt us, and we have to protect ourselves. You need to learn to protect yourself, too. I'd hate if something happened to you when I wasn't there."

He saw the frown on my face and put a hand on my shoulder. "Hey. I'm proud of you. It was hard, but you handled yourself well. And you didn't cry. You know how much I hate it when you cry."

Mom always had to deal with us when we got in trouble because Dad was always busy at the castle. He brought me and Chara with him a lot, dressed in our nicest clothes, because as the King's children we needed to learn how governing worked, as he put it. What we all particularly hated were the council meetings, a chance for two dozen plus representatives from various districts to take turns airing their individual grievances and arguing with each other about what should be done. Nobody could agree on anything because they were all different species, but lately their complaints were starting to line up: rising cost of housing, rising cost of food, higher crime, higher pollution, and general overcrowding. Pressure was mounting for Dad to expand the borders of the kingdom.

Dad didn't want to do that, of course, because there were already monsters living on the land they wanted to expand to. Outside the walls were ice caps, ice wolves, snowdrakes, and all kinds of others—and they had all lived there since long before we ever came to the Underground. Some of them were mad about the land we had already taken, and aggressions were constantly starting up and stopping. There was always a military commander at the table to fill us in on the state of things in the wild.

Frustrated and desperate, the representatives switched to trying to talk Dad into sending small bands of explorers to map out the Underground. When we had first been banished from the surface, in haste to escape our persecutors, we marched straight for the deepest caverns without making any note of the regions we were passing. Now we knew nothing of those regions except for what remained in the fragmented memories of the oldest monsters, so for the sake of increasing the knowledge of the kingdom, the representatives started insisting on these expeditions. Dad still didn't want to do it. He didn't want to put any of his own monsters in danger, but he gave in and permitted the representatives to start polling their constituents for volunteers.

That's what was on Chara's mind when he asked me, "How'd you like to go on a really big adventure?"

I was intrigued, and said, "What are you thinking?"

"I think the King is misguided. Those expeditions they've been talking about, to map out the Underground—they need to happen. The adults can't get it together, but we can. We could leave tonight and go east through the caverns, all the way to the Barrier if we like."

"There's no way Mom and Dad would let us do that."

"That's why we're not going to tell them. They might not like it, but they can't be mad if we bring back lots of new information about the Underground. It'll be the biggest adventure of our lives, and for once we'll be doing something really helpful."

I could tell by his voice that the thought of uncharted lands lit a fire in him. His excitement was rubbing off on me, and a big adventure really did start to sound like fun, just the two of us.

What could I do? I said yes.

We waited for Mom and Dad to go to sleep, then quietly got our stuff together. We retrieved our winter clothes from the storage closet and stuffed two backpacks full of as much food and supplies as we could carry, and since the dead of night seemed like the best time to sneak past the guards, we set out immediately. We got got past the wall through a gap in the patrols, and we were off.

No sooner had we crossed over than our feet started crunching through a foot of powdery snow, as if the wall had been holding it back. We walked straight through a forest of pine trees, more trees in one place than I had ever seen before, and it wasn't until I saw Home's walls disappear that it sunk in how far we were going.

Chara gestured at me to halt, then beckoned me to walk up beside him and see what he was seeing. He had managed to spot a monster before it spotted us.

"An ice wolf cub," he whispered.

The cub was walking through the forest on all fours, sniffing around like he was trying to find something. We waited a few minutes for him to move on, but when Chara took another step, the cub heard the crunch and his glance shot in our direction.

"Hey," Chara opted to be direct. "We mean you no harm."

I don't know if the cub heard him, but before we could do anything else he bolted into the forest. We decided not to think too hard on it.

The forest opened up into a spacious cavern, and we found we were perched high on a narrow passage with steep drops on either side. The drops went a long way down, and the ceiling was high above us—I never thought so much space could exist underground.

We kept our footing carefully along the winding path, and after a time we heard something behind us. The wolf cub was approaching us as carefully as we had earlier.

"H—Hey," he said.

"Hey," Chara said.

"I, um, I've never seen monsters like you before," the cub said. "I'm such a butt. I'm sorry. Are you going to see Amaryk, too?"

"Who's Amaryk?"

"You've never met Amaryk? He's only the coolest and most terrifying warrior in the entire world, and he's patrolling somewhere around here _right now_."

The cub perked his ears toward a noise we couldn't hear, then darted for a nearby snowbank. He covered himself in the white powder, and Chara and I dove for the bank nearest us. We watched a full-size ice wolf come through where we had just been standing, walking on all fours, wearing no clothes and carrying no weapons. He sniffed everywhere. He came up very close to our hiding spot, but for some reason he decided to back off.

The cub came out and shook all the snow off his fur. Chara and I followed.

"Wasn't that awesome?" said the cub. "If there'd been any bad guys here, you know they would have been in for it! I'm going ahead to see if I can catch him further on."

He ran off, but not before tripping and planting his face in the snow, his back legs flying off the ground for a moment.

We decided to move on. The passage narrowed and winded in all directions, and later on more pine trees appeared. We decided to take shelter under a tree and catch our breath.

Something hit the ground next to us. At first we thought they were icicles falling off the branches, but they came at us at an angle, and we looked in that direction to see the massive figure of the full-size ice wolf standing there. Amaryk had found us, and he was magically conjuring ice shards and launching them toward us like throwing knives.

We ran as fast as we could through the snow, but he was right behind us, raining ice on our heads. We went for the thickest part of the forest, split up, and threw ourselves down among the foliage. Amaryk scanned and sniffed around the forest floor. He followed a trail up to a particular bush, stuck his head in, and pulled it back with the cub clamped between his jaws by the scruff of the neck.

He left, taking the cub with him. Chara and I came out slowly. We hoped that might be the end of it, and moved on.

We cleared the forest and came out onto a new passage. The passage thinned to just about a foot wide, so that Chara and I couldn't stand side-by-side on it. We went single-file, and I had to crouch down to keep my balance. It was icy and slippery, and the edges dropped down farther than I cared to fall.

We looked back and saw the cub following just behind us.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," said Chara.

"Amaryk told me what was happening. He said you guys are from Home, said he could smell it right away, and he said he's going to kill you when he catches you. But that can't be right, right? He only kills bad guys, like the guys who raided our camp the other day. You don't look like bad guys. But he sounded serious, so you should probably get out of here and get back to where you came from."

The taller figure of Amaryk appeared behind the cub.

The cub lost his footing, and Chara, without a second's delay, grabbed the cub and shielded him as they both slid down the icy cliff. Without any time to think about it, I jumped down after them. The three of us slid down however many stories of stone and ice until we hit the bottom. Even though the snow broke our fall a bit, I was still sore when I tried to get up.

We walked along the cliff face, hoping it would keep us out of sight. We went far enough to think maybe we had lost Amaryk, but he spotted us again from up top and dropped down on us.

Chara picked up the cub in his arms and we ran. We took the first path we saw hoping to get up top, but it lead to a dead end in a crevasse, and Amaryk occupied our only exit.

As he conjured his ice shards for the last time, Chara said, "Asriel, the knife. It's in your bag."

He was talking about _his_ knife, the knife he had with him when he first fell into the Underground. I hadn't seen the point in packing it, but Chara was always more comfortable when it was around, so he insisted. Even now, I didn't see the point. What was I going to do? Run through a barrage of ice magic and stab this imposing warrior in the head?

Nonetheless, I flipped my bag around and retrieved the knife as quick as I could. I held it toward Amaryk.

"You have to do it," Chara said. "He will kill us if you don't."

I knew that was true, but even so I couldn't make the attack. I held the knife steady and said, "I—I don't want to fight you!"

He launched his ice at us. I only managed to dodge them by ducking very low.

"I know the monsters of Home have been giving you trouble," I said. "But we're not here for that. We're explorers. We're just gathering information about the Underground."

He launched more ice, and again I only dodged by a hair.

"We could be friends. Home would look kindly on you if they heard about how you helped us …"

It didn't work. He readied his shards again for a final attack, but the cub pushed his way out of Chara's grasp and ran to stand between me and Amaryk.

"Stop fighting!" he cried. "They're not bad guys. They're my friends. If either of you want to hurt each other, you'll have to …"

Amaryk held his magic. For a few agonizing minutes, nothing happened. Then the ice disappeared.

He hoisted himself onto two legs. "All right," he said. "I'll trust my son's judgment … this time. If you really are explorers as you say, I suppose I can spare you."

"Thank you," I said.

"What are you doing here?"

"We're on official Home business," said Chara. "This is Asriel Dreemurr, the Prince. We've been sent to explore the Underground and learn all we can about it."

"The King sent his own son to explore the Underground?" Amaryk said.

"He said there was no one he trusted more," Chara said.

"Well, as a friendly gesture, I'll take you to our camp and show you some hospitality. After some food and rest, you'll be much more suited to continue."

"Thank you very much," Chara said.

We followed Amaryk. We walked along the cliff face for some distance until we came to a path that zig-zagged up to the top. The plateau widened into an open space, where the ice wolves had made their camp. Their dens were dug out of the snow and appeared as domes sticking up. There were few wolves walking around at this time of night, but we could see smoke and light coming from inside some of the dens.

Amaryk turned to another wolf and said, "Tell the Elder I've brought some guests from Home."

A few minutes later, an older wolf came out to greet us.

"Amaryk," he said, "what fresh misfortune have you brought?"

Amaryk laughed. "I hope you can handle the threat of these two children. They're from Home, and this one,"—he pointed to me—"is the child of the King."

"I'd ask what you're doing here, but I'm sure Amaryk will tell me everything once we're inside."

We went for the largest den at the head of the village. A female wolf joined us, who must have been Amaryk's mate. He hugged and kissed her. The inside of the den was spacious, and the fire in the middle made it surprisingly warm for a house made of snow. The Elder, Amaryk, and some others sat down and invited us to join them, while more went and returned with food. They skewered the red strips with poles and hung them over the fire.

"Meat!" Chara said excitedly. "I haven't had that since …"

I couldn't muster the same excitement. I thought about asking where it came from, but I didn't have the courage.

While it was cooking, Amaryk regaled everyone with the tale of how he had stalked us through the woods. The Elder listened with cautious curiosity.

"Am I to take the presence of explorers as a sign that the King is looking for peace?" the Elder said.

"The King is always looking for peace," said Chara.

"You say that, but it seems every standstill ends when your soldiers raid us, or your people do something or other to reopen aggressions. What was it that set us off last time? I remember—a merchant from Home offered to pay us some gold for a few sacks of food. He got the idea he had paid us when in fact he hadn't, and when we refused to give him the food, he flew into a rage, ranted something about 'what savages need money for anyway,' then grabbed one of our younger men and beat him mercilessly. We attempted to scare him off with threats, but he wouldn't hear it, so to protect the young man, we were forced to kill the merchant. Of course the King only saw that we had killed one of your citizens, and so the fighting started again. That seems to have died off, but how long will it be before the next incident?"

Chara and I said nothing.

"And if that wasn't enough," the Elder continued, "we also face attacks from the east, from Aseyzil."

"What did you say?" said Chara.

"Aseyzil. Do you know him?"

"Aseyzil was the King's most trusted captain," Chara said. "He disappeared about three months ago while on patrol. Other patrols searched for him, but they didn't find him. The King was heartbroken."

"If you think Aseyzil is dead, you're quite mistaken," said the Elder. "He's in the molten lands, and by some means or other, he's converted the tribes there into his own private army. The waterfalls still serve as a buffer between us, but he's been working on them as well, and now the attacks are making it through to us. Thanks to Aseyzil, my people face danger on all sides."

"The King would be very happy to know that Aseyzil is alive," Chara said.

"You were going that way, were you not? Perhaps you'll run into him."

"We'll do better than that. We'll bring him Home."

"You might have a hard time disentangling him from his followers. They worship him like a god. Still, if anyone could reach him, I suppose it would be his own Prince Asriel. If you could dissolve Aseyzil's band of fanatics, it would relieve us greatly."

They all looked toward me eagerly, waiting for my word as the Prince.

"It looks like we have a mission," I said.

Amaryk said, "The river by our camp flows east from here, through the waterfalls and straight to the molten lands. Aseyzil's camp is on it. We'll lend you one of our canoes, so you should be able to reach him with little trouble."

We slept in the Elder's den, and the following morning he fed us a small breakfast. Amaryk led us to the river, selected a dugout canoe, and pushed it into the water.

"Remember, we're only lending this to you. We expect it to be returned on the way back."

"No problem," Chara said.

"Good luck, friends."

We threw our backpacks inside, Chara sat at the back and I at the front. We floated out into the current and were on our way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Chara took the first turn with the paddle while I watched the snow banks pass. After an hour or so, he got tired and asked me to take over. We traded off a few times, but before long we were both exhausted, and we just sat and let the current carry us. We pulled out a loaf of white bread and a couple jars of peanut butter and jelly and made sandwiches.

"Hey, Asriel," Chara said. "Can I see the knife?"

I pulled it out of my bag and gave it to him. He took the sheath off and inspected the blade and handle.

"How could I have let this get so dull?" he said. He ran the blade up and down his arm a couple of times to prove his point. "Maybe it's a good thing you didn't try to stab Amaryk with this. It might not have even pierced his fur."

"As long as it can cut vines, it's fine, right?" I said.

"I guess. It's good to take care of your tools, though. I really ought to sharpen this when we get Home."

He sheathed the blade and gave it back to me. The river transitioned into warmer waters, and the snowy banks transformed into a beautiful blue-stone cave. Chara and I dipped our fingers in the water as we drifted.

"It must be the waterfalls we're headed into," Chara said. "Are you still hungry? Those sandwiches didn't really satisfy."

"You want another?"

"I've got something better in mind. I heard about a mango tree around here. You want to get some mangoes?"

"What are mangoes?" I said.

"Only the tastiest fruit in the entire world. Come on. Let's go get some mangoes."

He picked up the paddle and directed the boat toward shore. We put on our backpacks and hopped out, and Chara led the way into the caverns.

From somewhere within, a soft glow lit up the cave walls. We followed the light. The source was a spacious pond glowing turquoise from below the surface of the water, with reeds, lily pads, and all sorts of other plants growing.

"That light might come from bioluminescent algae or something," Chara said.

"Bio—lumi—what now?" I said.

"Don't you pay attention in class? It means it makes its own light."

He sat at the edge of the pond, took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pant legs. I rolled up my pants as well, and we took a moment to sit and relax with our feet in the water.

"Only one way to proceed," he said. "Good thing we brought extra clothes."

We stood up and walked into the water, holding our backpacks over our heads. At its deepest, the water came up to about our chests. The bottom of the pond felt slimy, and through the water I could see the glowing muck coming up between my toes.

The pond was patchworked with mounds of earth rising over the surface of the water. We treaded from one island to the next and climbed out, some of the algae still sticking to the fur on my feet. On the mound with us was a huge flower with wide, blue, sheet-like petals, conspicuous among the bare dirt and much smaller plants. To my surprise, I heard words being whispered, and I followed the sound to the flower and put my ear to it. I almost couldn't believe that the words were coming from the flower.

"… circle around and come from the side …"

"What do you think that is?" I said, but as soon as I did, the flower stopped what it was saying and repeated, "What do you think that …"

"That's interesting," Chara said. "It repeats the last thing it heard over and over, like a parrot."

The flower repeated, "It repeats the last thing it heard over and …"

"This cave is so quiet, if it hears someone talking it must not hear anything else for a long time," I said.

We got back in the water and waded on to the next island. There we saw another flower, and we tiptoed quietly toward it to hear what it was saying.

"… the world was barren. The Queen Mother first created monsters from her own breath …"

It was the voice of an older woman. Chara and I stayed quiet and went from one flower to the next to follow the story.

"… Next she shaped the land like clay into hills and valleys. Then she fashioned plants, animals, and humans from the dirt. But the monsters were always special, because they were made from her own essence."

"Once she populated the world, the Queen Mother commanded the monsters and animals to live peacefully with one another. Satisfied with her work, she went to sleep."

The next flower spoke in the voice of a younger man. "We offer you prosperity, we offer you peace and strength and unity. Together we can achieve the true potential of monsters.

"Aseyzil will prove that."

Chara shot a glance at me and almost said something, but we remained quiet and moved to the next flower.

"In the Queen Mother's absence," the woman's voice began again, "evil titans came to the world and brought chaos. Greed, power-hunger, disease, suffering. Monsters and humans fell to these corruptions and began fighting each other."

"When the Queen Mother awakened and saw what had happened, she was very angry. She struck down each and every titan, and their bodies became the mountains."

The man's voice again. "Aseyzil wishes to expunge war and murder from this world. Bring us together so that no monster may fight against another monster. All you have to do is stop resisting."

The woman's voice. "The chaos that the titans had brought could not be done away with. The damage to the world could not be undone. So under the body of the largest titan, the Queen Mother created a new world, as a haven for those who were still pure."

The terrain began to slope, and the water flowed rapidly over waterfalls. Something wrapped around my ankle, or at least I thought it did—it might have been an eel or a snake, though actually it felt like some kind of vine—and I was pulled underwater. The current grabbed me and carried me over the falls.

I struggled to get my head above the surface, and managed to take just one or two breaths before I was pulled under again. The current dragged me far downstream, over even more falls and around rapids before it mercifully threw me up onto the shore. I lay face-down in the dirt for a while before I picked myself up shakily, gasping and coughing up water.

I had no idea where I was, and Chara was nowhere to be seen. I called out for him, but there was no answer. Everything was dark, and I could feel something, or rather a bunch of things, watching me. I didn't want to face the darkness. I wanted to stay where I was and wait for Chara to find me, but I knew that wouldn't be very brave. I had to be the one to find him.

I shook as much water as I could from my fur and clothes and pressed onward. Whatever was watching retreated into the darkness as I went, always just out of sight. I came across another flower and got in close to listen to it. It was the woman's voice.

"The new world was like a miniature of the old one, with a variety of lands from snowbound hills to river-laced grottoes. Holes were punched in the mountain so that rain and sunlight could reach us below. Those who had not yet fallen to the titans' corruptions were let inside, and the Queen Mother again went to sleep."

"Those pure ones became our ancestors, and our people once again lived peacefully as the Queen Mother intended. But evil from the surface has found its way into our haven, and it's unclear whether the Queen Mother will wake up once again to save us."

The next flower spoke in the voice of a child. "I really hope she wakes up," it said.

"Perhaps she will. But it may be that this time, we have to save ourselves."

I pushed my way into a thick forest of reeds nearly twice my height. I stepped on a plant with some kind of bloated pod, and the pod burst under my foot. I smelled something putrid, and my throat started to sting and I coughed. I tried to get away, but my vision went blurry, and I lost all sensation in my body and fell to the ground.

I saw the star fruit tree, and the cavern Chara and I had gone in to find it. From our hiding spot behind some rocks we spied a group of monsters around the tree's trunk. Chara studied them carefully and said:

"This is it. If we kill monsters, we gain _ex-pee_ , and as we gain _ex-pee_ , we gain _love_." Saying it now, I recognize this as gibberish, but in the dream it made perfect sense to me. "If we gain enough _love_ , we'll gain the power to reshape this world. Are you ready?"

All I said was, "Yeah."

"Good. You're a good partner," he said.

We leapt from cover and ran for them, me carrying the knife. All of the monsters became a blur, but I must have killed them, because after a while I stopped and looked up to see that everyone was gone except a single froggit, lying on his back in blithe confusion, and I sitting on top of him. Chara stood beside me, waiting for me to finish it.

Chara said, "Are we going to have come this far only to quit right at the end?"

But it was only then that I realized I couldn't deliver the final blow. I stood up and turned toward Chara.

He looked annoyed, then took a step toward the froggit. In an instant I shoved him away, but I forgot that I was still holding the knife, and I accidentally stuck it into his chest. He staggered backward and looked down at it, then back at me with a look of horror.

"I—I'm sorry!" I cried.

He felt the knife gingerly with his fingers, then grasped it by the handle and pulled it out, letting the blood run down his sweater. He turned the knife on me and stabbed me three times in the stomach. I fell, clutching the wounds, and I looked up to try and beg him for mercy. His eyes glowed red like a demon's, and he grinned widely as he raised up the knife again.

That's about all I could remember before I woke up.

I was wrapped in a sleeping bag, and nearby I heard the crackling and felt the heat of a fire. My clothes were gone, hung up on a drying pole off to the side, and sitting by the fire was Chara, also naked and wrapped in a blanket, tending a pot of water.

"Hey," he said when he saw me stirring. "I thought now was as good a time as any to cook up the noodles."

My head felt heavy, and my nose was stuffed. I leaned over and let out an enormous sneeze.

"You might have caught a cold or something. You were soaking wet when I found you," Chara said. "You were rolling around quite a bit in your sleep. How are you feeling?"

"I'm all right," I said. "Chara, I'm … I just want to say, um … I'm glad you're here. Underground, I mean. I'm glad you're part of my family."

He looked a little confused and said, "Of course." He started scooping the noodles into bowls. "You want a flavor packet in yours?"

"Not today," I said.

He opened a pack for himself, then handed me my bowl.

"Can you tell me another story about your village?" I said.

"Again? I think I've told you about all there is to tell," he said.

"One more time, just for me. Tell me about the grass."

"There's grass down here," he said.

"But not as much."

"That's true. Up there, there are no cave walls. The fields go all the way to the horizon."

"What's a horizon?"

"Haven't I told you all this? It's like the farthest point in the distance your eyes can see."

"I'd like to see it some day."

"Those huge fields were where we grazed our animals. Did I tell you about them?"

"Yeah, but tell me again."

"Well, animals are like humans, in that they're made mostly of water and flesh. Humans actually _are_ animals, but other animals don't talk, and most of them walk on four legs, like Amaryk except they can't stand on two if they feel like it. My village raised animals as our main source of food, kind of like your snail farms."

"Did you get meat from them, like what Amaryk gave us?"

"Yeah. Of all the things I miss from the surface, meat is one of the big ones."

He slurped his noodles and looked down for a bit, like he was thinking about something. After a while he smirked and said, "A lot of you monsters look like animals."

"What do you mean?"

"To be fair, some monsters look like humans, too. Skeletons, for instance, look like human skeletons. But a lot of you look like other animals as well. You look a lot like a goat."

"What's a goat?"

"They're like you, except they walk on four legs and don't talk. I'd like to see the look on your face if you ever met one."

I didn't respond.

"My village kept goats," he continued. "I remember once, one of them came down with … tuberculosis or something, I don't remember. Anyway, she was sick, and one of the elder women had to keep her in her house in order for her to get better. It was one of the first times I got to see an animal up close that wasn't in a herd, so I spent a lot of time there, petting her, giving her food, water, medicine and all that … She was there for about four weeks, and I really came to like her. I think she liked me, too."

He slurped on more noodles.

"A year and a half later, we killed and ate her. But that's how it goes."

I didn't want to talk about the animals anymore.

"Your village sounds really nice," I said. "Why did you ever leave?"

"It's not like I fell in a hole on purpose," he said.

"But you told me that people who climb the mountain disappear. Why would you climb it knowing a thing like that? Was it because you …"

I was hoping he would finish the thought, but he was silent, and I was forced to choke out the next words.

"… Because you wanted to disappear?"

He stared at the ground, then put down his empty noodle bowl and said, "Let's get some rest."

"Tell me why you left your village," I said.

"Are you sure you want to hear it?"

"I'm sure."

"All right." He began.

"Once, before I was born, a stranger came to our village. He was an old man and seemed like a nice enough fellow, so we welcomed him and let him eat at our communal dinner. After the food, he played a game with our leader that was sort of like a ritualistic wrestling match. During the match, our leader suddenly and unexpectedly fell over still, and a few people ran over to check him. They cried out that he was dead, but by then the stranger had disappeared. Someone took the necklace of leadership and gave it to the leader's son, Andrys. One man objected to this, saying 'You brought him here to murder your own father!' but he couldn't make himself heard.

"Andrys became the new leader, but he never stopped feuding with the man who had spoken out against him. That only got worse when it came to light that Andrys fancied a woman who clearly preferred the other man, and though he tried many times to win her over, in the end she and the other man married. They had two children, me and my younger sister, Alfa. One day, Andrys invited my father on a hunting expedition. My father went, but he came back with a knife in his chest, and Andrys claimed he had fallen on the blade in a horrible accident. The other men who were with him backed him up.

"Andrys went to my mother and offered be there for her, you know, help take care of her and her children. She refused and locked herself in our house, and stopped eating until she starved to death. I was three and Alfa was one at the time. We were orphans, and it just so happened that the man who adopted us was Andrys himself. Whether it was out of remorse or something, I have no idea. But he raised us for almost a decade, while he ran the village with an iron fist.

"I was just old enough to have dim memories of our mother and father, but Andrys was the only thing Alfa knew. He was known for yelling during gatherings and refusing to compromise on anything. Alfa absorbed his 'do what I want' attitude and developed a disobedient streak, and every time she did anything out of line, Andrys beat her, hard.

"One night, Alfa and I were hanging out in our room after Andrys went to bed. Alfa said, 'If Andrys died, who would become the leader?' I said, 'I don't know. His son or daughter, I suppose.' 'But he doesn't have any blood-heirs, so that would mean us, wouldn't it?' she said, and then she continued: 'I spoke to one of the elder women earlier. She told me about how Andrys became leader after a stranger visited the village. She also told me about how our mother and father died. No one wants to speak out against him, but I'm certain that Andrys killed our parents, and I'm not the only one.' 'What are you getting at?' I said. 'It's obvious that Andrys is a tyrant. What if we had a way to free ourselves, and our village, from him?' she said. 'I don't know,' I said. Then she said, 'You and me. We catch Andrys at some moment when he's unaware, when he least expects it, and we kill him.'

"I don't know if it was conscience or lack of courage, but I hesitated. She was strong in her conviction and convinced me that if we did this, we would free the village from evil and be heroes. I agreed to what she was saying.

"We spent the next day or so planning it all. It just so happened that the knife Alfa pilfered to do it with was the same knife our father had supposedly fallen on, which Andrys kept. One evening, as Andrys was sitting in a chair after a hard day of ruling, we struck. Alfa took the knife and tried to creep up behind him while I stayed behind as backup. She moved as quietly as she could, but either his ears or his instincts were too sharp for her, and he sprung up and smacked her down. She fell to the floor, and the knife slid away from them.

"'You ungracious …' he started saying, practically bloody-eyed with rage. He hit her again and again, the hardest beating he had ever given in his life. He probably would have killed her then and there with his bare hands, but in his fury he didn't notice that I had picked up the knife and come up behind him. I stabbed him directly through the lung. Alfa scurried off to the side of the room, and Andrys fell and rolled onto his back and looked at me with eyes full of both anger and terror. He died in a pool of blood, and that was how the others found us when they came to check on the commotion.

"An immediate village-wide communion was called. I lied and told them I had killed Andrys in the heat of the moment, to save my sister from being beaten. The elder woman spoke. She said that the stranger who came to our village was either a monster or a human possessed by one, but either way he had left an evil presence that had been with us ever since. It infected Andrys, and though I saved my sister and the village by killing him, the evil transferred to me by my evil deed. I was told to leave the village forever, and I did so immediately, with nothing but the clothes I was wearing and the knife. I didn't even get a last look from my sister. She just sat there, completely catatonic.

"I climbed the forbidden mountain, said to make anyone who visited it disappear. And wouldn't you know it … disappearing is exactly what I did."

The two of us sat in silence for a while.

"I'm sorry I kept you up so long. You should sleep," he said. "Do you feel well enough to keep going? Or should we turn back and go Home?"

"I'll be fine. We have a mission, don't we? We've got to bring Aseyzil back Home. For Dad and the kingdom."

"That's right. Get some sleep. We still have some ways to go."

I laid my head down. Chara stayed up a little longer, sitting and watching the fire, before he finally doused it and went to sleep as well.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

I couldn't have found the boat to save our lives, but Chara managed to retrace his steps, and after some hours of walking and a bit of climbing we arrived at the riverbank. We pushed the boat into the water, he took the paddle, and I curled up on the floor. The journey was miserable, and the boat's rocking agitated my head.

We had gone a good distance down the river when Chara suddenly slowed down and looked out toward the banks. It was like he was spooked by something just beyond. He stayed still just long enough for me to think he must have been imagining it before a fireball flew toward us and fizzled out in the water a few feet away. Chara put the paddle back in the water and booked it, as a hail of fire fell down on us. One fireball hit the side of the boat and took off a piece of the wood, and the spot was charred black.

We flew down the river, and managed to get out of range of whoever was shooting at us without losing our heads. As the fireballs stopped, Chara slowed down a bit, but kept us going faster than we were before.

We saw a stone structure looming ahead of us. Just on the other side of the riverbank was the molten lands, a perilous network of rocky passages hanging over lakes of lava. Chara came almost to a stop, and we approached very carefully. There was a crowd of monsters on the bank, not attacking but watching us quietly. They looked like mostly natives, flame elementals and vulcanoids, all manner of fiery monsters. We held position about thirty feet from the shore before we heard a voice yell out.

"Hey!"

A figure pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Unlike the others, he was a dog, a white Labrador retriever of some kind wearing Home-style fatigues. He waved his paw at us.

"We're not coming any closer!" Chara shouted back. "Those monsters attacked us."

"I'm sorry about that," the dog shouted, "but they won't do anything as long as I'm with you. You didn't come all this way just to sit in the water, eh?"

Chara exchanged a glance with me and slowly, deliberately, paddled up to the bank. We ran the boat onto the shore, and the dog extended a paw to help us out.

"You must have noticed I'm from Home, and from the looks of it, you are, too. In fact, if I remember rightly, you're Asriel and Chara, the King's very two sons themselves." I recognized his voice. It was the male voice we had heard on the flowers at the waterfalls.

He continued, "I'm sorry they attacked you. They're wary of intruders because they want to protect him, you know—protect Aseyzil. They think you might be here to, well, to take him away."

"Can we speak to Aseyzil?" Chara said.

"You don't speak to Aseyzil, you know, you listen to him. If you heard him speak you would know what I'm talking about. He's enlarged my mind, he sees the world around us with such lucidity, he's a warrior-poet, a visionary. But he's not here right now. I wish he was, I'm certain he would be happy to see that the King's two sons have come to visit him."

"Where is he?"

"He's gone away. He goes out with his people from time to time, he feels happiest with his people, he feels at home with his people, sometimes he's gone for days or weeks at a time. If the other tribes could see how much he loves his people, maybe he wouldn't have to do what he does."

"In other words, he's out on a raid."

"You can't judge Aseyzil the way you would an ordinary monster." Apparently changing the subject, he said, "He saved my life, you know."

"All right. I guess we're going to have to wait for him."

"Of course. Come and rest inside if you like."

"No. We'll wait in the boat."

We hopped back in and sat on the shore. The dog left, and with him the crowd of natives dissipated as well. Chara got out the bread and jars again and made more sandwiches. We sat in the boat all night and into the following morning. As sunlight came through the cracks in the mountain, Chara noticed some commotion around the compound, a lot of monsters moving about.

"I think it's time," he said.

We stepped onto shore without waiting for anyone to come and get us, and walked up the slope onto red igneous rock. We could see that over the edges of the narrow passages was a long drop into molten goop. The compound jutted precariously up as if it were balanced there. Natives started to take an interest in us and formed a circle as we approached the main entrance. The circle tightened, and I felt a strong pair of arms grab me around the waist. Before I knew what was happening, I was being lifted and turned upside down, and my face was pressed against the stone, kicking up a cloud of ash and soot.

I cried out for Chara, I shouted his name over and over, but I was coughing on the soot and couldn't see him anywhere. The world became swirling chaos, and the monsters didn't stop until every inch of my white fur was black. They carried me inside and sat me down on the floor before a bed on which a figure lay supine.

The figure sat up slowly, holding his head like he was in pain of some sort. He leaned over in a brief coughing fit, and I was surprised to see that he was the same species as I was, wearing a ragged T-shirt and pants. When he spoke, his voice was small and soft, like it took a lot of effort to get the words out. He bowed his head forward and said, "Your Highness."

Not knowing what to do, I bowed my head in return.

"It's an honor to have you in my presence," he continued. "How is the King?"

"He's good," I said.

"I'm glad. The King and I have always been the closest friends." He paused. "Had you ever stepped beyond the walls of Home before you came to see me?"

"No," I said. "But my brother and I have enjoyed exploring the caverns that branch off from the city."

He smiled. "That shows you have an adventurous spirit. I explored those caverns myself as a child, and there were more of them back then. Once, I snuck beyond the walls to get a bit more of a taste of the world. I went all the way to the river and sailed down it on an improvised raft. At the waterfalls I disembarked, and after exploring the caves for a time, I came upon a room wherein rocks embedded in the ceiling emitted a sort of natural light. You couldn't see the ceiling or the walls, only the specks of the light itself, and it felt like, in just this one room in all of the Underground, you weren't in a cave at all, but outside, standing beneath the starry sky. I stood in that room for what must have been an hour in awe."

I sat still as he rubbed more of his headache away.

"Did the King send you?" he said.

"No," I said.

"What brings you to me?"

"The monsters at Home have started talking about sending explorers to map out the Underground. My brother and I took it upon ourselves to do it first."

"Then it's purely by accident that you've arrived at my camp?"

"No," I said.

"Why, then?"

"We heard from some monsters along the way about your, um, campaign. I want to—that is, it's our intention to take you Home."

"Does the King disapprove of my campaign?"

"He doesn't know about it. Dad, er, the King, would be very happy to know you're alive."

"It's not that simple, I'm afraid. My people, the ones you see all around you—they were savages living off the land before I found them. I brought them prosperity, stability, and power, and now you'll find I have a responsibility to them. They need to be taught the ways of civilization, and brought into the blessings of the kingdom."

"The King has been against using violence on anyone. Your goal might be good, but your methods are, um, unsound."

"Unsound," he repeated. He put his head in his hands for a moment. "The King and I have always been the closest friends, but he never had the courage to do what was necessary. It's unfortunate, but we've seen that the only way for savages to advance is by conquest."

"In any case, it's not your decision," I said.

"Is it not?"

He lay back down, and the monsters seized me again by the arms. They brought me outside and tied my wrists to a stone pillar that seemed to have been built for that purpose. The dog showed up carrying a small clay bowl full of water, and he lifted the bowl to my mouth and let me drink.

"He's happy to see you, despite how it looks." He put the bowl on the ground next to me. "I could hear it in his voice. I don't mind telling you he nearly ran me through with a spear once. I don't remember what I was doing specifically to annoy him, probably running my mouth like I'm doing right now, but he grabbed a spear from the nearest warrior and pointed it inches from my neck and said if I didn't make myself scarce in the next five seconds he would run me right through. Can you imagine? In one instance, he saves my life, and in another he wants to end it. But he did save it once."

I sat there half-listening to him.

"I don't think he feels that way about you, though. I don't think he would harm one hair on your body. What do you think would happen if he let you take him back to Home? Would they make a big show about 'forgiving' him for his 'past transgressions' and bring him back into the fold, so he can go back to patrols and guard duty? Or would they do the truly courageous thing and crucify him for insubordination? No, he can't return to that world, he doesn't belong to that world anymore. That life is like a dream he had in the womb, those monsters may as well live on another planet." By this point he was baring his teeth at nobody, working himself into a rage the more he went on.

"He hates all this. He hates the violence and the killing and the militarization. He doesn't want to hurt monsters. But he's enlightened, he sees clearly what he has to do and does it without mercy or remorse. No one will understand why he did the things he did unless … unless they hear it from their very own Prince." He tapped me on the nose with his finger, rather annoyingly. "That's what he wants from you."

He took the bowl, stood up and left.

I passed the night tied to that pillar, but I didn't sleep. My head throbbed, and I was sneezing all the time. The snot ran down my snout, and the only way to clean it off was to curl my knees to my face and use my pant legs. Sometimes I didn't bother. The next morning, some monsters came and spooned some rice into my mouth. Then they untied me, carried me inside, and tied me again to a different rock. It looked like some kind of living room or study, with desks, chairs, books, and paper cluttering up the place. Aseyzil was there. He spoke out loud as if to himself.

"We were often sent on excursions, usually defensive in nature—intercepting a fighting force that was headed for the wall, that sort of thing. The King rarely allowed us to take the fight to the enemy, which is why my unit often saw fit to put the savages in their place ourselves, taking food and supplies from their camps and occasionally roughing up their stronger men. We had seen that savages fight each other, but I was quite surprised when I marched to a camp to find it had been wiped out sometime before by a neighboring tribe. Everyone was gone, even the women and children, but I realized something peculiar. Savages are not evil beings, they are monsters like you and me, but unlike us they are not beholden to a system of morality nor written law. Their laws are the laws of nature, their commandments come from the forest. They were, indeed, stronger than we were, for here they had wiped out a tribe from existence, and we had not."

He paused as if waiting for me to respond, but I didn't.

"When I arrived at this camp I was taken in as a member of the tribe, and I got to see tribal warfare firsthand. Battles here are usually carried out at some distance, with spears for the ones who can hold them and the rest using fire magic. The aim is not to destroy the enemy, rather for each tribe to make a display of its strength, and send a message to the other that they're not to be messed with. Tribes must to some degree be constantly engaged in low-level warfare, as ironically it preserves peace and fosters coexistence and diversity among them.

"When I saw this, it was obvious to me how one tribe might easily dominate the others. I taught my people to craft daggers. Monsters with daggers could get in close enough to render the spears of the other side useless, and kill their opponents in unprecedented numbers as well as allow the magic-users to get in close behind them. Our warriors handily conquered the surrounding tribes and combined the survivors into a supertribe, and with our bolstered forces, we'll be able to conquer yet more."

I sat in obstinate silence for a while, but eventually my mind got the better of me and I croaked out, "What then?"

"What do you mean?" he said.

"When all that's done, and you find yourself the ruler of all tribes, are you going to hand it over to the King?"

"I intend to show the King that the tribes are not to be feared. They can, and indeed must be pacified."

"I don't think so. I think you're going to find yourself the ruler of your own kingdom that rivals Home, and you won't be keen to give it up."

He stood up and calmly left the room.

Some monsters came and moved me again, and I passed the night in another room in silence. The next morning, they unexpectedly threw my backpack at my feet and untied my ropes. I picked up the bag, and just like that, I was free. I didn't stick around to ask why, just ran back to the boat as quick as I could, jumped in and sat there, thinking about what to do.

I wanted very badly to push out into the water and start paddling Home that very instant, but we had come all this way to find Aseyzil, and a part of me still didn't want to leave him behind—and I still had no idea where Chara was. I dug through my backpack to get some food, and there I found Chara's knife. For whatever strange reason, I found it comforting, like he himself was sitting there with me. I spent a long time lying on the floor of the boat, looking up at the roof of the cave and holding the knife in my hands.

Eventually I found my courage and returned to the compound. This time no monsters tried to capture me. I looked through the study and found piles of books of poetry, most of it from Home authors but a little of Aseyzil's own creation, and I also found a stack of paper on which Aseyzil had penned a full report for my dad—penned, but never sent. I flipped through it and skimmed the words. It read like a fairly dry military report, and most of it I couldn't understand, but what surprised me was that on one page, across the neatly-lined lettering, someone had scrawled, in big, shaky letters, "Kill them all. Set them free."

I was there for days, watching Aseyzil's movements and overhearing his musings. I heard him read some poetry out loud—not that he read it for me, it was more like he read it for himself and I happened to be in the room. The dog sat with me and desperately tried to help me "get it," but frankly his explanations were even less comprehensible than the poems had been.

One night, the natives engaged in a ceremony. Everyone gathered around the central square, and some hunters led a four-legged beast into the middle. The hunters plunged daggers over and over into the beast's back and neck, while the others danced, sang, drank and celebrated. They butchered the thing right there and pulled off strips of meat for everyone to eat. While this was going on, I met Aseyzil in the study, and tried for the last time to convince him to leave.

He leaned over his desk, facing away from me.

"Are my methods unsound?" he said. "In your eyes, it must be that I've brought unprecedented death and suffering to countless monsters for no good."

"We can move past all this if you come Home," I said.

"You think I can walk away from the things I've done? I've lived my whole life by a code, and I'm prepared to keep living and die by it as well. It's in your hands to save them, but you must do it by striking me down."

He grabbed a spear and swung the point like a staff in front of my head. I leapt back and tripped over a pile of books, tore the sheath from the knife and pointed the blade toward him.

"I don't want to fight you!" I said.

He said nothing, and only waved his spear at me again. I ran around the books and desks to try to get away from him.

"You were my dad's friend, weren't you? He wouldn't want us to do this," I said.

He threw a desk out of the way and lunged with the spear. I felt my back come up against the wall, and I held the knife up to try and protect myself. He struck the knife, and it flew from my hands and clattered across the floor. Aseyzil held the point of the spear to my neck.

I stood still, closed my eyes and waited for the final blow. But it didn't come.

"Pathetic," he said. "All I want is to live and die like a soldier. You can't even do that for me …"

He lowered his gaze and slowly dropped the spear to the floor.

A second later, there was a loud grunt of pain. Aseyzil fell to one knee and looked at me in the last instant before he turned into dust.

Chara was there, holding the knife, standing just behind where Aseyzil had been.

I couldn't say anything. My heart was racing at a million beats a minute, my whole body shook, and my brain couldn't think a single thought. Yet everything was still.

I sat on my knees, dropped my head to my chest and cried. Chara sat down with me and gently wrapped both arms around my head.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said. "He was going to kill you, right? It must have been so scary."

"Yeah," I said. "He was going to kill me."

I held his chest tightly and sobbed as hard as I could into his sweater.

"I didn't know where you were," I said.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "I'm here now, and I promise I won't leave you again."

We stood up and, he still gripping my hand tightly, left the compound by the front door. The monsters must have realized what happened, because as they saw us coming they stopped all noise and motion and stared in awe. We stepped into the crowd. Those in the middle parted to let us pass, and we walked through. We returned to the boat, pushed out into the water, and started on our way back Home.


End file.
